


Volunteer

by Cimila



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Past Domestic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 10:25:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3933262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cimila/pseuds/Cimila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Imagine Steve Rogers likes to volunteer at shelters for battered women and children as Captain America. Everyone thinks it's either a publicity stunt (media) or just because Steve is a nice guy and it's what he does (the Avengers/everyone else). Only Bucky knows it's because Steve's father was abusive and Bucky doesn't mind keeping that between him and Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Volunteer

When Bucky is back to himself, or what feels like himself to him, regardless of the similarities or differences to the people he’s been in the past (the finding of which was a long, drawn out process he’ll never detail for the media, no matter how much they ask, so  _stop_.  _asking_.) the first thing he notices about Steve and his association with the Avengers is the media circus that surrounds them whenever they do things.

Sure, back in the day there were journalists stopping by, snapping pictures of Steve and the Commandos, and before that they made reels of him, had him in a few films to drum up support for the war effort, but that was nothing like this.

Whenever they go out in public it’s like a hoard of mostly well intentioned ducklings following the Avengers around. So normally, they go out in disguise or else they can’t get to their favourite anywhere because of journalists with their phones out, ready for a sound bite, photographers snapping pictures, both usually asking questions.

Even people on the street, if they’re recognised, will stop them and ask for a photograph or an autograph. Those people, Bucky don’t mind, especially not the fans, because Bucky’s well aware of what it’s like to be in awe of Steve Rogers.

The people he does mind, however, are the ones who shout questions and grin with knives in their smiles, because they plan on taking whatever they get and poking and prodding it until it becomes something else entirely.

 Now, he doesn’t mind when people try to look underneath the underneath; understands it all too well, actually. Knows how far you need to dig, sometimes, to get to the truth. It can be amusing, though, when they’re digging for more but there’s nothing to be found because Steve’s just a genuinely good guy, and he don’t always have motivation beyond  _‘it’s the right thing to do,’_  which was the motivation behind most of the fights Steve had gotten into back when his heart was bigger than his body and he had something to prove to everybody.

And after a while, even the shark eyed journalists figure it out and mostly stop risking life and limb by pushing into Steve and, usually by extension, Buckys personal space. From the start, however, before Bucky came careening back into Steves life like he can’t exist outside of it, there was one thing Steve did that most people brushed off as Steve Rogers just being a Stand-Up-Guy, most of the media as well. There were one or two outlets that scathingly reported it as a publicity stunt, but, almost as a whole, the world looked at this particular deed and decided that there was no need to look further than the surface.

Ironically, it was one of the things Steve did with more motivation than  _‘it’s the right thing._ ’

Once a week he’d visit a shelter that catered for battered spouses and their children, had all the shelters in the city on a roster so he could visit them all regularly. Sometimes he’d do it more than once a week, if a particular shelter was having a harder time than normal. Wearing his uniform, bearing his shield, Steve would spend time with the people in each shelter.

At the start, Steve had told him late one night, in the darkness they both knew made all confessions easier, everyone in the shelter would cringe away when he came near. He knew why, understood why, so well. Because he was huge now, taller and broader than most of the adults who sought shelter, towering over the children, and Bucky could hear the pain in his voice, felt hatred choke his own throat up because he  _remembered_.

Joseph Rogers, Bucky hopes he’s rotting in hell, drunk bastard that he was, had been one mean sonofabitch. That’s where Bucky had learnt how to patch Steve up, not trial and error when Steve had stumbled home, blood dripping from his face after he’d tried to ‘do the right thing’, but at Sarah Rogers knee, watching her patch herself up, patch Steve up.

He was never allowed to stay the night at Steves house, and he hadn’t understood why, but he’d been happy to have Steve over at his, as had his parents. And then the bastard had gotten home early one day and Bucky got shoved under the bed alongside Steve.

If he concentrated, he could still feel Steve in his arms, both of them curled around each other and shivering with impotent anger and fear; too busy holding each other, stopping each other from doing something stupid to cover their ears or eyes as they hid under the bed at Sarahs’ pleading insistence.

Sometimes Bucky goes with Steve to the shelters, lets the kids cling onto his metal arm and giggle as he lifts them up, while others clamber over Steve like he’s their personal jungle gym. By the time Bucky feels up to joining him for the first time, the kids have lost most of their shyness around Steve, encouraging the new arrivals and showing off that they already know how to hold the shield to their new friends with all the arrogance of enthusiastic children.

Steve greets the adults at the shelter, normally but not always women, introduces Bucky to those who’ve sought shelter and those who offer it, and he can see the recognition in their eyes when they look at him and Steve.

It’s more than the usual stares they get when dressed as Captain America and The Winter Soldier; their eyes are heavy when they look at Steve carefully handing his mask to a little girl with a broken arm, when Bucky keeps his voice and gestures soft whilst talking to a timid man.

They know why Steve’s here, Bucky thinks as he arrives with Steve at another shelter, but for all the press that hangs around, promoting the shelters while Steve’s there in uniform, he knows they’ll never say a word, is grateful for it, so Steve can keep his secrets just between the two of them.

**Author's Note:**

> [Check out our Tumblr!](http://imaginesteverogerss.tumblr.com/)


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